The UK restaurants with the most beautiful interiors
When deciding on a restaurant to book, there's more to consider than just what's on the plate. It's a holistic approach that creates the best restaurants, where delicious food, impeccable, friendly service and a wonderful setting all come together to create the best experience. A restaurant can survive with two of the three elements, but they truly thrive when all three come together. Below are a selection of the best restaurants in the UK where the interiors are worth visiting for alone.
Finn Studio1/18Glebe House, Devon
The vision for the interiors at Glebe House in Devon took inspiration from Chatsworth House and so fun colour has been injected at every turn in the form of mustard-yellow French antique beds, tulip-printed wallpaper and mint-green fireplaces.
Glebe House takes inspiration from Italian agriturismos and so food was always central to the mission with Hugo signing up to six intense months at cookery school on leaving his job in insurance. The guesthouse remains a family affair with Hugo’s mum Emma serving in the green-and-white-striped restaurant as guests tuck into mussels with grilled leeks, dulse and rock samphire. Glebe House is undoubtedly the lunch spot to book en route to or from Cornwall, but it’s an even lovelier spot to bag a bed for the night and enjoy breakfast of Aga eggs and still-warm frangipane pastries in the morning.
Southleigh, Colyton EX24 6SD; glebehousedevon.co.uk
Steven Joyce2/18Updown Farmhouse, Kent
This listed red-brick farmhouse is hiding one of the country’s best restaurants in a vine-clad conservatory filled with heat lamps. Most dishes come straight off the wood-fired grill: an Aberdeen angus T-bone served with morels and wild garlic perhaps, or grilled pork with chickpeas and turnip tops. Sleepovers in the main house feel like you’re staying with a friend who’s just that little bit more daring with their interiors – sitting rooms in tangerine or deep blue depending on the mood, and an additional guesthouse with a bunk bed for families in a clever combination of pinks and red. At breakfast there might be homemade rhubarb and ginger jam to spread on sourdough fresh from the original farmhouse bread oven. And all just 10-minutes from seaside Deal and its cluster of great homeware stores, independent galleries and antiques markets.
Updown Road, Betteshanger, Deal CT14 0EF; updownfarmhouse.com
3/18Cowley Manor, Cotswolds
Freshly reopened by the Experimental Group, this classic 19th-century house has had a seriously modern makeover and is aiming at a cool young crowd. The grand Italianate house (just south of Cheltenham) has a lovely setting, with grounds sloping down to a lake and the tiny 12th-century church of St Mary next door. Legend has it that Lewis Carroll was once walking here and, seeing a white rabbit disappear under a hedge, was inspired to write Alice in Wonderland. The new interiors, designed by French superstar Dorothée Meilichzon are full of references to the classic book, with chequerboard patterns, rabbits and mushrooms providing playful and quirky elements throughout the rooms and public spaces. The cocktail bar is a highlight, with its original figured wood walls now the backdrop to a huge, bright blue lava-stone bar. Jackson Boxer is the consultant chef behind the menu, which features homegrown vegetables and herbs from the kitchen garden. The well-equipped spa has indoor and (heated) outdoor pools, so you can happily refresh yourself after a night on the tiles.
Cowley Manor, Cowley, Cheltenham GL53 9NL; cowleymanorexperimental.com
4/18Campania & Jones, London
Lots of people will be familiar with the aesthetic of this much-photographed southern Italian restaurant tucked away behind Columbia Road’s cobblestones in Shoreditch. It was once a working dairy farm with stables and these days there’s a unique warmth to the glow inside – tables filled with diners feasting on plates of pappardelle ragu and radicchio salad dressed with anchovies and parmesan. It's romantic, rickety London at its finest (plus there's a stunning two-bedroom apartment to rent with exposed brick walls and dark green paintwork detail just upstairs) if you want to make a weekend of it.
23 Ezra Street, London E2 7RH; campaniaandjones.com
5/18Sessions Art Club, London
It's not easy to bring the interiors, atmosphere, wine list and food together seamlessly in a restaurant but the team at Sessions Arts Club has managed it with such ease, it makes you wonder how others miss the mark. There are many components to the instant success that Sessions Arts Club has enjoyed and the setting is vital. An inconspicuous red door to the side of the building, with an iron arch above it, makes you feel like you're in on a secret as you buzz to gain entry. Once inside, it's up in the lift to the fourth floor, past a heavy red velvet curtain and into the restaurant. Layers of coloured, peeling plaster on the walls find their foil in sumptuous textiles; a bar at one end twinkles in a tempting manner and a soft glow of candlelight flickering from the tables makes the room feel even more like a wonderful secret than the entrance might have done. Sessions Arts Club manages to perfectly balance simplicity and decadence, and offer an experience at once pared back but heady. A light touch on ingredients makes way for an expert hand at seasoning, so every sauce is as flavourful as it should be and every finished plate leaves you clamouring for more.
24 Clerkenwell Grn, London EC1R 0NA
6/18The Three Horseshoes, Somerset
Take a picturesque country pub, add to the mix a much-lauded chef, a talented up and coming interior designer, an experienced landscape gardener, and an owner/investor with deep pockets and a sizeable dose of London glamour and, more than likely, you’ll end with an establishment that can’t help but attract column inches across the media. Let’s start with the roll call of characters involved. First up is Margot Henderson, chef, cookery writer, co-patron of the Rochelle Canteen in Shoreditch (one of the best restaurants in London), and key player on the London food scene alongside her husband Fergus Henderson of the brilliant St John restaurant in Spitalfields (and another). The two are keen advocates of nose-to-tail cookery (with cookbooks to prove it) whereby no part of an animal goes to waste. Next up is Frances Penn, daughter of acclaimed interior designer (and Somerset local) David Mlinaric, who more than proves the adage of apples never falling far from the tree. The palette range is simple but not bland; floors are wooden overlaid with rugs; curtains are hefty linens, sometimes striped or lightly patterned, sometimes plain; furniture, lighting and art are a carefully curated blend of antique and contemporary. Then comes landscape designer Libby Russell (also a local) whose pretty garden of hedging, lawn and flowering beds is small but mighty. And finally, we have the owner, Max Wigram, former London gallerist who has a second home nearby, which he shares with his wife, fashion designer Phoebe Philo. The old, flag-stoned bar, now linked with the dining room by a central wood-burning stove is a convivial space for the consumption of meaty bits and piggy bits, local veg (largely provided by ‘no-dig’ pioneer, Charles Dowding), sourdough and cheese from the fabulous nearby Westcombe Dairy, and all sorts of Somerset ales and ciders.
Batcombe, BA4 6HE
7/18Native at Pensons, Herefordshire
On the border where Worcestershire and Shropshire meet Herefordshire is the Netherwood Estate, a sprawling landscape that houses amongst its many amenities a restaurant that hosts Native, an ultra-sustainable way of cooking. What's more, there are two extremely stylish rooms for far-flung guests to waddle back to after what is one of the finest meals you'd be lucky enough to try. The restaurant itself is in a former barn, set on just one floor with a mezzanine on either end so the beamed ceilings soar above diners, with glass doors on two sides keeping the space bright for breakfast and lunch service, but inky and intimate for dinner. The mezzanines hold a small bar on one end for pre-dinner cocktails, and a small dining room with a terrace on the other for private parties and lunch guests. On one side, Native overlooks a courtyard, bordered by landscaper Robert Myers' studio, the shop with locally-made produce and gifts and the two rooms directly opposite.
Pensons is truly holistic, with produce grown in the kitchen garden that extends behind the two bedrooms, steak knives made by a local blacksmith who used walnut wood from a fallen tree on the estate for the handles, sculptural basket light fixtures by local weaver Jenny Crisp, napkins from a textile maker on the estate and a wonderful collection of museum cases on the walls, displaying pieces found by a late farmer on the land, who had collected them over the course of his career. There are layers of stories here, just like there are layers of flavour in the food and it all comes together to make one very special place.
Stoke Bliss, Near Bromyard/Tenbury Wells, Herefordshire/Worcestershire Border, WR15 8RT
8/18Holm, Somerset
There are no other hotels (that we know of) where guests walk through the front door and straight into the kitchen and where the service counter doubles as the reception. This, of course, is the legacy of Holm’s days solely as a restaurant, but it has the added of advantage of propelling overnight guests straight into the action. A small sitting area with cosy wood burner lies to the right of the front door - all part of the open plan space - with the restaurant and wine cellar beyond. Both upstairs and down, a distinctive rough-luxe scheme defines the look and feel of the place with exposed lime plaster, bare brick and polished concrete creating the perfect backdrop for simple furniture – a mix of mid-century antique finds and specially commissioned pieces – and contemporary prints and paintings sourced largely by local friend, Decca Lang. An overall sense of Britishness is integral to Holm’s design ethos, with a focus on ‘local’ wherever possible. Furniture-maker, Tortie Hoare, whose studio is barely a mile away, has crafted beautiful oak cabinets for the bedrooms; local ironsmith Alex Pole has designed all Holm’s signage plus a set of exquisite elm-handled steak knives in the restaurant; and numerous ceramics from John Leach’s nearby pottery abound.
28 St James's St, South Petherton TA13 5BW
9/18Osip, Bruton
Osip is a tiny slip of a restaurant in Somerset, owned and operated by Merlin Labron-Johnson. The former Londoner upped sticks and left the capital for a quieter, more rural way of life and everything about Osip is a distillation of that. The interiors are cool, calm and collected in an array of whites and natural accents to accompany the farm-to-table ethos inside. Zellige tiles on the lower half of the walls add a tactility to the space, while the other side of the room houses a blue banquette that is the sole colour to punctuate the idyllic space.
1 High Street, Bruton, Somerset. BA10 0AB
© Jake Eastham10/18The Pig at Harlyn Bay, Cornwall
Some would say this is the loveliest hotel of all the Pigs. It’s certainly the moodiest – an uneven warren of darkly-painted, Dickensian spaces where guests pace the flagstones, flitting from the cocktail bar to an intimate lounge or one of the many, lovely dining spaces. Rooms are dressed in velvets, brooding heritage shades and botanical wallpaper, which adds up to the lived-in country house style the group has become known for.
Blustery walks from the front door of this greystone cliff top hotel are rewarded with Poldark-worthy views; in the warmer months, the surrounding gardens and meadows are full of wildflowers, so that guests can sip Cornish sparkling wine and admire the views across the Camel Estuary. Long lunches from the menu (which focuses on suppliers with in a 25-mile radius) are easily walked off along Harlyn Bay, watching the surfers bop up and down on the water like seals.
Harlyn, Padstow PL28 8SQ
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Mark Anthony Fox11/18Twenty8 NoMad, London
Covent's Garden American export, NoMad Hotel, has quickly made a name for itself since it opened directly opposite Covent Garden's Royal Opera House in 2021. It's set in two conjoined buildings, one comprising the former Bow Street Police Station, the other the Bow Street Magistrates Court – and you definitely get a sense of place when you come here. We particularly love their show-stopping restaurant – which has recently rebranded as Twenty8. Find it in the Atrium, the show-stealing, architectural addition to the site which encloses the rear courtyard in a three-storey, Edwardian-style glasshouse. It is dark outside, but the Atrium sparkles with light.
12/18KOL, London
Santiago Lastra's KOL is a vibrant expression of his Mexican heritage. Every aspect of the restaurant is infused with warmth; the terracotta, wood and ceramic interiors, the incredibly elegant open kitchen and the sunny disposition of the staff. The menu is a tasting one; choose seis or nueve for either a six or nine course spin around the complex cooking that Santiago and his team so deftly put together in the open kitchen. Every plate is so alive with flavour, texture and levels of heat that work together in a kind of alchemy. There is a lot to admire about it, but the food really is the star of the show and all the beautiful things in the restaurant revolve around it – different plates and bowls from a range of ceramicists to complement each dish, bespoke leather tortilla warmers, and an intriguing and modern wine pairing that balances the fiery heat of many of the dishes, all set within the most beautiful surrounds.
9 Seymour St, London W1H 7BA
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13/18Luca, London
Luca is one of the best restaurants in London, serving up the most elegant, wonderful plates of Italian food within a setting that could be from a Luca Guadagnino film. The interiors are sleek and warm, making it a wonderfully romantic restaurant for an evening; low lighting, soft leather banquettes, dark wood and sheer curtains all create a perfect sense of intimacy, as if you and your fellow diners are in on some great, romantic secret. Opt for the chef's menu and let them choose your courses for you – you won't regret it and are in extremely safe hands.
88 St John St, London EC1M 4EH
Joann Pai14/18Barbarella, London
This vast, louchely glam restaurant amongst the glassy towers of Canary Wharf is the latest venture from the ever playful Big Mamma group. Barbarella takes its name from the 1968 sci-fi film starring Jane Fonda, and its retro-kitsch interior design pays homage to 1970s Italian cinema, the stylish era of Fellini, Argento and Antonioni, but it also has a distinctly New York vibe. The space, particularly the upstairs with its mirrored ceiling, swirling carpet and tubular chrome and metallic leather chairs, is pure disco maximalism - Studio 54 meets Big Biba’s opulent Rainbow Room restaurant. The extensive menu is packed with Big Mamma takes on Italian crowdpleasers; some of the theatrical dishes have undoubtedly been concocted with primarily the Instagram pack in mind, but we’d plump for the tagliata steak with salsa verde and crispy potatoes. Ensure to save room for dessert too: the pistachio gelato and Italian chocolate and salted caramel tart were a suitably indulgent way to finish off an evening surrounded by the impressive excess that is Barbarella. - Tilly Wheeler
Mackenzie Walk Unit 3 YY, London E14 5HX
15/18Archway, Battersea
Despite its name, this cosy neighbourhood Italian is not located in N19, but on the other side of the river in Battersea, just a short walk from the recently redeveloped power station. The name comes from the fact that it is nestled inside a railway arch; in fact, on the way there we wondered if we were going the right way, as it's tucked down a very quiet street amongst various other businesses that occupy the arches. Once we stepped through the café curtained doors, however, the restaurant was bustling, even on a weeknight: this is the kind of hidden gem that locals know about (and keep to themselves). The high ceilinged interior is smartly fitted out with tongue and groove panelling, marble tables and olive green banquettes, with a shiny open kitchen at the back; it's easy to forget you're under an old railway arch in south London. In terms of the food, the offering is straightforward and homely, with a small menu. The highlights of our meal were the starters: burrata with anchovy and pangrattato, and fresh, crispy fritto misto. - Tilly Wheeler
Arch 65 Queen's Circus, Nine Elms, London SW8 4NE
Nacho Rivera16/18The Ledbury, London
Of course, an interior refresh was in order for the second coming of The Ledbury when it reopened in 2022 and chef patron Brett Graham looked to interior design studio These White Walls for an overhaul. Founder Rose Murray has quite the portfolio when it comes to high end restaurant design and it was her work at Hide in Piccadilly that caught Brett's eye. The restaurant before was a little stuffy and outdated, but now, it has a cool formality that suits the menu but allows for a much more relaxed atmosphere. There is no pomp and circumstance here but a mix of tactile, soft materials that allow you to ease into your surroundings. Centre stage is a wall of stone slabs, except it's actually a wall of mushrooms as the incredibly textured material that clads one wall is made of mycelium. Everything feeds back to Brett's philosophy to food and as a man obsessed with mushrooms and truffles (you can expect a lot of truffle shavings on your dishes), it made perfect sense to choose a statement mycelium focal point. The light fittings too are of the same material, with walnut wood and marble mixing in seamlessly.
The overall effect is inky, intimate and luxurious but not in a way that causes you to straighten your back. This is helped by the staff who are–as you are probably expecting to read–at the absolute top of their game. Rose and her team took the staff into consideration too, creating a space that allows them to flow easily and seamlessly, meaning they are always there yet never intrusive. A central table by London studio Based Upon serves as a sort of bar area (though the real bar is hidden away) and stops that awkward feeling of any one table of diners being the centre of it all. An artwork from the same company is the sole artwork on show–bar a suspended floral display in muted tones–and seems to move and change as you look at it.
127 Ledbury Rd, London W11 2AQ
17/18Spring, London
The Australian chef Skye Gyngell has brought her feminine touch and elegant seasonal cooking to a wing of Somerset House, a huge neo-classical building south of The Strand. Her sister Briony Fitzgerald has converted the 19th-century drawing room into a light-filled space where guests can enjoy Skye’s meticulously seasonal cooking in comfortable, modern surroundings. The menu includes dishes such as guinea fowl with grilled fennel, citrus and aïoli or ginger cake with meyer lemon cream and blood oranges; the plates are colourful and fresh and reflect Skye’s light touch, all within the crispest interiors of any London restaurant.
Somerset House, Lancaster Pl, London WC2R 1LA
18/18Jikoni, London
Ravinder Bhogal's Jikoni is a favourite haunt of pretty much everyone in the food industry – and many more people beyond that. She operates it as ‘a kitchen without borders’, bringing in flavours, ingredients and spices from every corner and the globe and blending them together into something truly magical. From South East Asia to the Middle East, via Britain, East Africa and beyond, the menu at Jikoni offers an ever-changing array of delights that enliven the palette and the interiors are just as bright, bold and memorable. They are pretty, full of pattern and – like the food – draw influence from all over. There's something for every part of the palette at Jikoni and it is as much a feast for the eyes as it is for the tummy.
19-21 Blandford Street, Marylebone, London W1U 3DJ
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